The Thomas Jefferson Hour; #0425; Democracy/Education

Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, your weekly conversation with our third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. The Thomas Jefferson Hour is produced by High Plains Public Radio and New Enlightenment Radio Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to the search for truth in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson. Today's program was recorded in June of 2004 and covers the topics of democracy and media, the Enlightenment and Education. Please join us as our host, Janie Guil, speaks with Thomas Jefferson portrayed by humanity scholar Clay Jenkinson. Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour. My name is Janie Guil and I'm the host of today's program. Seated before me is our third president, Thomas Jefferson. Good day to you, Mr. Jefferson. Good day to you, citizen. Mr. Jefferson, we have an interesting question today and it comes from a professor in California, Eva Maria, and she has asked you about media and democracy, kind of the way that those two dance together, both in your time and now in our time. Well, the Constitution is largely silent on media, but of course

the First Amendment says that there shall be freedom of expression in the United States. So that created an Enlightenment ideal in which there would be less censorship and less pressure on public discourse than at any previous time in human history. My belief is, it really comes straight out of the European Enlightenment that ideas exist in a kind of marketplace and that there should be a free marketplace. So that every idea is acceptable, even if they're bad ideas or seditious ideas or obnoxious ideas or selfish greedy offensive ideas or for that matter, pornographic ideas, that every idea should be allowed to compete for the attention and the allegiance of the American people and that there should be no attempt by government to decide what ideas are good and what

ideas are bad. That when government gets involved, it distorts the process of the search for truth and that the best thing to do is to allow unlimited exchange of ideas and to assume as the Enlightenment does that in a fair test good ideas will defeat bad ones and truth will overcome error and good sense will trump nonsense and superstition will yield to science. So that's the basic philosophy of the Enlightenment notes. That's one thing to say that it's quite a different thing to actually make it happen because all of us are thin skinned. Nobody likes to be abused in the press. Sometimes there are actually questions of national security in which an unlimited freedom of the press would be a mistake or not a mistake. It certainly would endanger the Republic and so one begins by articulating the ideal which is an absolutely free and uncensored press and then one begins to pull away from that ideal to a certain degree but

with great reluctance to protect character and to protect the Republic. Newspapers in my time were the main form of the dissemination of discourse. There were of course letters, pamphlets, broadsides, books of poetry and there were sermons and people on soap boxes on street corners but the basic form of exchange in my time unlike in yours was the newspaper. So the newspaper was the critically important media of my era. Thank you Mr. Jefferson. Let's go to national security. To what degree should a country prevent democracy or put a lid on democracy in the name of national security? Well I never I think if you ask it to what extent should a government control the press for national security that's a different question but if your question is does democracy

have to yield to national security my answer would be no because if you destroy the Republic and the ideals of democracy in order to preserve the nation then what have you accomplished? You've now lost the battle anyway so we have to believe that the nation can always be preserved and secured while adhering to our constitutional value structure and if at any time the government needs to pull sovereignty away from the people to protect them from some external evil that has to occur extremely seldom the government has to be extremely reluctant to undertake it if it does undertake it it should apologize to the people and it should invite the people to throw it out to repudiate that government if necessary in other words that it is almost in my

opinion almost never the case that a government has a right to trample upon democratic constitutionally based institutions and ideals in order to preserve that nation from threats. Thank you Mr. Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson regarding the Bill of Rights and the judicial system and the internet what comments what's happened in your opinion to the Bill of Rights because of the free flow of information that we now have we are now in an information age not a knowledge age but an information age where the access is incredible and how does this impact the Bill of Rights? Well now you have approached an extremely fascinating moment in human history because I have articulated the principles of the Enlightenment for an unlimited free marketplace of ideas you know Milton famously said in his pamphlet area of Pogetica written in the mid-17th

century quote I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue. In other words ideas have to exist in a robust environment of debate of point counterpoint of discussion that ideas have to exist in a marketplace where there is a competition for truth and that a fugitive and cloistered virtue untested by skepticism untested by detractors is a weak one so to use the term that's quite common in your own time what Milton and the Enlightenment were offering was a robust public culture in which government is constantly being asked to explain itself where nothing is taken on credit where people are saying no we want government to prove that this is necessary we will not just accept the declarations of government or any other idea so that's the

Enlightenment ideal and for several hundred years this ideal has been articulated by different people in different ways I articulated it when I said for example given the choice between newspapers without government or government without newspapers I would not hesitate to prefer newspapers that's the same ideal Madison articulated in fact Madison gets better marks on unlimited freedom of the press than I do in my second term I did say to several state governors that a few wholesome prosecutions of the worst abuses of the personally assaulting press would not greatly offend me my view that is that character is so important that there has to be some standard of protection for public characters people bad newspapers can't just say whatever they want about government officials that there has to be truth or there there has to be some standard of decency where Madison went farther he was closer to the Enlightenment ideal than I was and people who are

interested in civil liberties and freedom of the press would put me in the highest position for my rhetoric about freedom of exchange would give me somewhat lower marks for my actual behavior as president I'll accept that but Madison went farther so there have been over the course of the last several hundred years all of these outstanding articulations of this ideal but it's never been that practical because the structure of exchange of knowledge has been such that there has inevitably been inconvenience and expense or peer review that has prevented an unlimited exchange of ideas so that let's say that someone wants to express his views of his government he has to find somebody who will publish them he has to find a press to print them himself if he wants to have right them he has to proliferate copies and distribute them this is inconvenient it's expensive so there there has been historically a structural filtering mechanism that has discouraged people without means from expressing themselves but in your time thanks to the I guess you'd say the

democratization of discourse and particularly your internet there isn't anybody who can't find a way to express his views on anything and there is no peer review you don't have to have an editor of a newspaper agreed to print your letter or your column you can print that on a website you can post it on a public website of some sort and it becomes part of the free exchange in my time if you wanted to publish a pornographic novel you had to find somebody who would publish it and distribute it in a bookstore to carry it in your time because of the internet pornography is freely and universally available and there is no filtering mechanism on it so you are reaching the point where the great ideals of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment are now being realized and you're going to have to ask yourself if you really still believe in those Enlightenment ideals of unlimited freedom of exchange you may find that it's a very messy

chaotic disturbance maybe even dangerous world where there is an unlimited freedom of exchange what if for example I as a scientist publish the recipe for a certain weapon because I believe in freedom of exchange that recipe for that weapon becomes available to terrorists and they then create weapons of mass destruction based upon this ideal this Enlightenment ideal that no idea should be closeted you are approaching in the 21st century the moment when the great vision of the Enlightenment will be a realized on earth and be tested as never before because the paradox of freedom and unlimited exchange is that if you believe in it you must be prepared for the dark side of it and there is definitely a dark side to human discourse there is anger there is lust there is

predation there is sedition there is revolution and there is terrorism that is also a part of human discourse and if you give equal voice to every utterance some of those utterances are going to have a damaging effect on culture Mr. Jefferson given that what do you suggest that we do in the United States and then what do you suggest that the world does given that the internet is a worldwide communication system well I believe in the Enlightenment I believe that you must now educate your young people so deeply in the humanities and in the liberal arts and skepticism and critical thinking skills that they will become fully mature users of information that when they enter the free marketplace they will enter it as highly evolved responsible resourceful skeptical human beings the only answer to this problem is to create

Jeffersonians I said if you expect to be a nation ignorant and free you expect what never was and what never can be I still believe that but for 200 years you've had the advantage in that culture has largely been controlled by elites who have had a filtering capacity on the exchange of ideas now that those filtering mechanisms have been dissolved more or less it's the case that more than ever before you must bring highly evolved responsible people to the free marketplace in other words if you manage the marketplace you can have citizens as children but if the marketplace is truly free then you must have citizens as adults and that means you are going to have to get much more emphatic about education I might even say infinitely more interested in humanities education in order to survive because the other answer is censorship

and the problem with censorship is that what seems like sedition to me may seem like freedom fighting to you and what seems like pornography to me may seem like high art to you and censorship always raises the same problem who are the sensors and how do we choose them and how do we know that they're acting on behalf of the ideals of civilization and not out of some selfish or idiosyncratic view of what is good or bad taste thank you mr. Jefferson this past weekend I finished a book which you would find fascinating it's a book entitled influence by Robert Caldini and in there he's talking about a variety of psychological studies that have been done on humans and there's two studies in particular that I'd like to bring out one study is regarding the copycat crimes and it turns out that you can statistically measure an increase in crimes in a particular type of crime after crime has been published in the

newspaper in particular they did this on suicide if a very famous person commits suicide you will see a tremendous rise in the same type of suicide method over the next two weeks in the same type of population so for instance if it's a white male who's in his 40s you will see a spike in white male 40s suicides and they tend to be of the same nature so that is one study that's been actually there's a variety of studies that have been done but that's one result that I wanted to bring out to you on the second study has been under censorship or filtering as you called it and in this case people tend to be more agreeable to the subject that has been censored so for instance if you're going to censor a discussion on co-ed dorms and you know the college prevents that from happening then there's a rise in people who are agreeable to co-ed dorms because there is a certain intrigue and ideas that are perceived to be so obnoxious

that an entity an institution wants to prevent them from being discussed there's a certain illicit joy we take in in going to something that is seen as dangerous enough to be outlawed by the institution or the state yes of course that's why freedom is so important that any time there is a prohibition on free exchange that distorts the marketplace and people then go to that zone not because they believe the ideas but because they object to the institution that was preventing the exchange of the ideas at the same time what you were just saying about harmful ideas or the dark side the terrorism etc if we have copycat crimes that go up after Columbine we had a whole host of shootings occur in schools so if that information goes up should the government prevent the proliferation of that information to the American society in order to

prevent copycat crimes you see the point you are raising the questions that are going to bedevil the 21st century freedom is a paradox if I create a free society and really mean it I must be prepared for a large number of individuals to choose to use their freedom badly but if freedom is only permitted so long as the citizens behave responsibly and that freedom is withdrawn if citizens appear to be using it for ends that are not approved by the state then it's not freedom and in traditional hierarchical civilizations there have been many restraining mechanisms for example one we haven't talked about is mobility in my time if there were a pornographer in Charlottesville he might be shunned but in a large mobile electronic world like yours that pornographer could be delivering his goods in Charlottesville but

they might be produced in Hong Kong or Paris so that you have created the anonymity of free exchange in addition to the mechanisms and the structures of free exchange in a real community if somebody is stealing hogs from his neighbors he's either caught by the law or there is peer pressure for him to behave responsibly but in an electronic world where there are 300 million citizens or for that matter 7 billion people participating in it there is such anonymity by being lost in the electronic mass that there can be no significant community or peer pressures because where there is anonymity there is effectively no responsibility that's a paradox of your time that didn't exist in my time I lived as I've said many times in a three mile per hour world so if somebody is spreading seditious pamphlets and starts in Portsmouth

New Hampshire and works his way to Springfield Massachusetts he can be followed we know who he is we know what ends he's staying in we know what post offices he's using we know what taverns that he is dining in we we see his horse or his carriage he can be stopped by authorities if necessary or if you believe in the enlightenment someone in a tavern can say knock it off you're behaviors obnoxious and we don't approve of it but in your world you have created a mass anonymous system in which there is no way actually to exert community pressure on those people who use it for anti-social ends thank you mr. Jefferson we will continue this discussion after a short break you have been listening to the Thomas Jefferson hour with humanity scholar Clay Jenkinson and his host Janey Guil today's program is about democracy and media the enlightenment and education if you would like to donate nine dollars and receive a copy of today's program please call 888-458-1803 again the

number is 888-458-1803 please stay tuned we will be back in just a moment welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson hour I'm Janey Guil and I'm the host of

today's program seated across from me is Thomas Jefferson today we are talking about democracy and different forms of media and how democracy may have changed or been influenced by various forms of media mr. Jefferson before we took the break you were talking about the fact that we needed educated individuals how is it that in today's society which is changing so rapidly where you just can't get your arms around all the information that you need even to make sometimes a simple decision how do we in effect get great education for our children well the the purpose of education is changed in my time it was still possible for someone to know more or less what there was to know in other words I'm regarded by many as America's Renaissance man I'm sure

that's an exaggeration and I don't deserve it but to the extent that it's true I was interested in all knowledge and I took my cues from Lord Francis Bacon one of my heroes who said I have taken all knowledge to be my province I wanted to know everything I wanted to know mathematics as well as as classical Greek as well as Christian Latin or the history of theology or the history of liberty or the basis of natural and constitutional law or designs of architecture or the history of architecture or paleontology or landscape design and there wasn't anything that I didn't want to know except a handful of things and if I had had more life and more time I might have wanted to know those two I was I tried to be a universalist and it was possible for a gentleman amateur like myself to know more or less what there was to know about medicine and it was possible for a gentleman amateur to conduct celestial observations of latitude and longitude to look through a telescope at the moons of Jupiter to

study the transit of Venus when it when it occurs from time to time or to conduct an archeological dig you know it wasn't a world of experts it was a world of gentlemen amateurs and that was a that was wonderful and so what I wanted was information and a broad knowledge of the world that's very important and it's certainly greatly desirable to me but it's not really what we're talking about it's not important in your time that the average citizen be an astronomer or chemist or know the difference between a good pharmaceutical drug and a less good one there really are experts that you can trust on questions like that it would be nice if you could all know more or less what there was to know but your world is too complex for that and so that's not going to happen but here's what you must do you must create mature human beings and by maturity I mean somebody who is deeply grounded in certain areas language I mean everybody should know more than one language everybody should know your language the

language of the peoples with whom you share your continent the language of the emerging civilizations that are going to be important trading partners or diplomatic partners or with whom there might be tensions and so I would say and I know this this will sound crazy but if a person growing up in your world should know who's an American should know English and Spanish and Chinese Mandarin Chinese and probably Arabic at the very minimum and I would hope they would know Latin and Greek and and some other languages too but it's clear to anyone that China is going to be the most significant new power in the world of the 21st century and it would be extremely good if if all are most Americans knew some Mandarin Chinese meanwhile you are embarking upon what appears to be a decades-long struggle with radical Islam not all Muslims are Arabic but most of the Muslims that you are going to be in difficulties with

do speak Arabic and it would be important for you to know that language of course would also be useful for you to know Parsi the the language of the Iranians but it seems to me that in a global village of the kind that you have knowing languages is still more important than it was in my time when it was critically important and yet as a nation you pay almost no attention to languages you have fundamental disputes with the Arab world and there are almost no Arab speakers in the United States you have fundamental trading possibilities and tensions with the Chinese world same as true there Japan is another France is a fourth so there's something that doesn't require expertise in biochemistry which is within the capacity of anybody who is listening to this program and yet it's something that so far you have not done this is something I think you ought to do secondly a very deep understanding of history you should know the history of Islam the history of the Arabic world the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire the the Crusades and

their ramifications what led to them what happened during them they're aftermath the rhetoric of the Crusades you should know the history of of Asia Japan China Confucianism the rise of governments and the types of governments in these different parts of the world that seems to me to be absolutely essential to people who are living in your time so those are sort of broad fields of knowledge that you could have that would help you actually live in the world which you are inheriting there's then there's the broader humanities everyone should be grounded in his own literature so the literature of the United States the literature of England the literature of Western Europe the the basic sets of ideas in Western Europe going back to the Greeks into the into the Jews of ancient Israel everyone should be profoundly well educated in Western civilization and Western traditions and if you asked an 18-year-old explain the the principles of the Reformation he or she ought to be

able to do it if you asked that same person explained to me the Holy Roman Empire and its economic interests in the Middle Ages that person ought to be able to do it furthermore you should now in the world that you live and learn traditions other than your own so if you become an expert in the Western traditions you should also know something about Eastern traditions or indigenous traditions or the peoples of the third world but all of these things are available to you in forms of curriculum unprecedented in human history widely available thanks to the very information revolution that we are describing here and then finally there is the most important of all educations which is basic understanding of human history human nature human creativity human expression of the glory and agony of mankind so one needs to be an expert in something Homer or Shakespeare or the work of Chaucer or Dante

but these books are not just entertainments these books are windows into the basis of the human condition and if you if you have become a mature human being you you have mastered a body of material of some sort maybe it's music for some people for others it might be pottery or painting for for somebody else it might be the history of horsemanship but you ought to master something so that you have a deep window of insight about the human condition in one or another of the arenas and the arts and the humanities that's not going to create paradise on earth but that's going to solve virtually all problems and then when that 18-year-old who is thus equipped with his own Western traditions with something of a non-Western tradition with a with a series of of masteries of of contemporary and ancient languages and a very deep understanding of the

human project through law history politics etc that person coming to the free marketplace of ideas is going to be able to sort it out intelligently but if you take some nincompoop who's just a human being who has a tiny smattering of pop culture and no grounding or mastery in any significant culture that person is going to be lost when he comes to the free marketplace thank you mr. Jefferson mr. Jefferson when you look at public education today versus what you had imagined it in your time you were privately educated of course however you were not necessarily a generalist you were mastering things way before the age of what we would consider mastery to occur what do you think of today's public education system and the amount of time that it takes for children to even get a generalized education well I don't think that your children are

unintelligent I'm sure they're as intelligent as we are and in fact thanks to better health and better nutrition and better basic comforts they're probably in much better positions to learn than the people of my time were furthermore you have curricular materials of unprecedented subtlety and mastery so I don't think that something happened to humans that makes you less capable of learning in the year 2004 or five than than you were in the year 1805 what's happened is that your priorities have shifted and you know we didn't have television we didn't have recordable music we apprehended the world through books and through live music and live appreciations of art and we were more serious about education at least the educated elites were more serious about education than you are so the difference is that your priorities have shifted if there were no television in other words if every young person

between the ages of four and twenty four could never watch television or listen to a single recording or play a video game that person would have no choice but to get more serious about culture but you have decided that it is acceptable to allow people between the ages of four and twenty four to have a pro forma smattering of book culture and high culture but to wallow endlessly in oceans of popular culture and you have somehow decided that that is an acceptable approach to modernity and I would say you are in danger of losing not only your republic but losing western civilization if you don't wake up thank you mr. Jefferson I would say that we have a very big challenge on the personal side also in that we seem to have lost the ability to dream over 50 percent of the population I believe is on some sort of antidepressant these are

revolutionaries you know discontent is is a common element in human culture and when discontentment rose to a certain level in France it led to the French revolution which cut off the heads of the king and queen of France and established a the first continental republic in Europe in your time those people who took to the streets and and changed the world would be placed on psychotropic drugs and they would made be made to cope with their world rather than to change their world I think if where there is discontentment there is a sign of the imperfection of our institutions and that our answer to that should not be to get chemical sooters our answer to that should be to change the world thank you mr. Jefferson when you were growing up did your parents I know your father died when you are rather young but did your parents talk with you about mastering anything did you know at a young age what you wanted to master well to a certain degree my father was the most impressive man that I ever met he had certain models never ask anyone else to do what you can do for

yourself never put off till tomorrow what you can do today how many evils have no basis in in truth that we allow ourselves to dwell upon on dark possibilities but we should clear our minds and get active and do something my father was an enormously resourceful man he was a master plantation owner he also was a master surveyor and he believed very strongly in self-education and I got my commitment to autodidacticism to continual reading without the need of professors to urge me to do it from my father's example so I would say yes now I'm a little unusual I'm not saying that everyone who's listening needs to know six languages and to study all subjects I realize that I represent a fairly unusual approach and I don't think that that's necessary for citizenship but I do believe that everyone who's listening should learn and other language at very at the minimum and that everyone is listening should take on new fields

what ask yourselves what have I wanted to learn about and have never done is it Russian novels is it calculus is it astronomy is it the history of library classification is it grafting of roses or or orchard management is it architecture but everyone is listening must have in the back of his or her mind a menu of things that under the best of all possible worlds if you won the lottery or you had infinite leisure you would learn I would say take on one of those starting today and master it and you will find that your life is dramatically better and that your sense of confidence in the face of a troubled world rises exponentially thank you mr. Jefferson mastering something what is what is the process to master something well let me take something like ancient Greek which I highly recommend I mean if you can if you're if you're looking for something and nothing comes to mind I would say learn ancient

Greek it's worth it to read Homer and the original how do you learn ancient Greek well my time it was more difficult than yours but you you go to a bookstore or a library and you get materials there are grammars you go through them dutifully and this means every day you make vocabulary cards you memorize you listen to tapes if there are tapes you take on the hard work of spending a enough time every day to keep the continuity growing you find a partner to work with if possible because that that brings community and reinforcement to the process and you work through it until you can read Greek in the original and it might take four years it might take one year but it can be done there isn't any one listening to this program who can't master ancient Greek by the year 2010 and if you do it requires an understanding of the process you know it's it's not something that you can do in your sleep but if you do it that is just a sign of other forms of mastery that now become available to you so let's just say somebody doesn't want to learn ancient Greek it doesn't seem worth the

time and trouble well what about growing a garden you create a garden that is sufficiently productive that you can grow a portion of your own food and you make that your your commitment this isn't something that you can do overnight either you can't just throw seeds on a plot of ground and have a garden this takes several years of of work trial and error reading talking to neighbors experimenting finding out where your temperament is and if you do that you will have mastered that mastery can be highly pragmatic it doesn't have to be bookish but it means that you don't just settle for a little that you see it through until you have tell you could say I may not be the best gardener who ever lived but if I met the best gardener who ever lived he would have to respect what I have done that's the standard mr. Jefferson thank you very much it's now time for us to take a break and when we return we will be speaking with the scholar behind Thomas Jefferson we will be back in just a moment today's

quote about Jefferson comes from Michael Lind the author of the next American nation the new nationalism and the fourth American revolution mr. Lin says regarding Jefferson he was opposed to cities he was opposed to factories he was opposed to standing armies he was opposed to conventional diplomacy he was opposed to all but the most minimal authority on the part of the federal government every major feature of the modern United States from racial equality to social security from the Pentagon to the suburb represents a repudiation of Jeffersonianism taking the racism anti-statesism and agrarian ism out of Jefferson's thought is like taking the class analysis the dialectic and the call for revolution out of the thought of marks what in either case remains except for vague and unobjectable aspirations to better mankind though everyone today claims to be a Jeffersonian the only genuine contemporary Jeffersonians are cranky reactionary conservatives who think the country went

wrong with the Norse victory in the civil war or industrialization or desegregation the rest of us should be honest enough to let them have their Jefferson he happens to be the real one for these reasons Jefferson cannot be an important figure for liberal nationalists unless perhaps he is to symbol the major fallacies and evils that we in the United States have overcome the place of Jefferson in today's pantheon should be taken in a trans-American pantheon by his arch rival Alexander Hamilton you have been listening to the Thomas Jefferson hour today's program was inspired by a professor in California Eva Maria who wrote to us and asked us about democracy and the media if you have a question or a topic that you would like Mr. Jefferson to address please call us at 1-888-458-1803 1-888-458-1803 and leave the topic on our voicemail or please write to Mr. Jefferson at www.thhyphen-Jefferson.org www.thhyphen-Jefferson.org

thank you and please stay tuned as we speak with Humanity Scholar Clay Jenkinson welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson hour my name is Janie Quill and I'm the

host of today's program seated across from me is Humanity Scholar Clay Jenkinson Clay what a powerful show today I have to say Janie that you know we didn't we never know where this shows headed we started to talk about media and we drifted off into sort of a related but different direction and I got so inspired I was thinking oh my god I'm gonna go learn something you know it just made me think what a slacker I've become and you know I I believe everything that Jefferson was saying I don't think it's that practical but I mean I do believe as I've said before in this program that the best thing that could happen to America is that if our televisions blinked out tonight and they could never come back I you know I have to say that in spite of you know Charlie Rose and and Ken Burns documentaries and some things on A&E and so on the fact is that we don't need television and television it really is the greatest soul destroyer that ever existed on earth and that we are absolutely in love with it and that it is taken over our lives it's destroyed our children it's

wrecked our neighborhoods it's it's the drug of drugs and it's free unlike marijuana or cocaine or heroin which are illegal and filtered and difficult to get in the free marketplace television is bombarded you can't get on an airplane now without being forced to watch television you can't be in an airport a lobby of a hotel a bar of any sort it is an obsessive television culture and it is absolutely destroying us and if the televisions went off we would make love make neighbors read books and master stuff and we won't do it I mean it's I've never seen an addiction or read about one that has the grip of this addiction and you know if we were a serious culture we could turn television into Ken Burns all the time but we're not a serious culture and our frivolousness is is really going to destroy us and when I was doing this talking as Jefferson I just thought you know by God he's absolutely right we have I have to discipline myself more and and I need to to take on some of those forms of mastery that I have wanted to take on

and have not glad it is a difficult addiction I can only tell you that I have not had cable television nor have I had an antenna on my TV for 12 years in that time frame I think I have watched maybe 15 TV programs it puts a totally different spin on life when you do it but it was very difficult to break away from it very very difficult and I think that television has contributed to the rise in personal unhappiness in the United States and obesity and obesity and sedentary illnesses and in civility right I watch a fair amount of television with my daughter and she should be ten in a few weeks and the in civility of children on children's programs is just unbelievable we have now ratcheted down into a world of of vulgarity and and rudeness that we routinely

accept but which is not very honorable but I don't want to I don't want to spend our time just to crying television because that's not really the issue the issue is mastery Jefferson believed that the key to life was to do whatever you did with sufficient energy discipline and curiosity so that some kind of deep confidence percolated through you and that that confidence could then be used in your life as a citizen as a parent as a professional etc that that mastery wasn't just learning Greek it was the setup for a larger confidence about life but it's actually I'm going to talk about something that I was reading this weekend it's saying that the yearn to learn is the key to happiness sounds like a program but think about it that is what you were saying

when you master something one yourself confidence grows and you always have something to rely back upon but one of the things that we do in our school system today is we basically pit one child against another for answering getting the correct answer thereby destroying the child's self esteem and desire to learn and you can't master something without having that basic ability that basic curiosity that basic desire to learn absolutely there has to be that curiosity and the only way that curiosity stays alive is if you see the world as a thing of wonder and you only see the world as a thing of wonder if you're not seeing it through this little flickering screen that's sitting in front of you I mean that when I'm out I was recently in North Dakota and I went to this place which is an Indian an old Indian village just north of Bismarck it's called double ditch and it overlooks the Missouri River and I

sat out there at dusk in the grass and looked down at the Missouri River and within seconds my life had deepened and widened and my soul found its place and it relaxed and I was more human in nature than I am in an airport waiting room and I thought to myself what kind of colossal idiot am I that spends so little time here where I know my soul is alive and thriving and so much time in those places where I know it isn't I mean it's partly a dilemma of modern industrial urban life but it's a lot of it is choices Janie and when you're out there you you automatically become curious what's what bird is making that sound I thought I remember sitting there it was just an absolutely gorgeous night it was perfect perfect North Dakota night I remember singing where does the wind come from and where does the wind come from you

know you're sitting there and suddenly it's not it's not constant suddenly the wind picks up and it kind of blows harder and harder until you think oh my god it's gonna be a serious wind and then it slowly ebbs and maybe comes back and forth and it slows down and goes away and then it's gone for a while and then you're there and you become aware of sounds and you become aware of the sky and the for the Venus appears and there's that's that's slender kind of crescent of yellow gold pink that's the last of the of the dusk and then the wind picks back up and you know where did that come from and a coyote hulls and you think where do they live how do they survive thus you know how do they how do they live with us they're right there we're there six miles from town we do everything we can to eradicate them they still are out there they live how do they live how do they eat what do they do by day what is it saying what's the sound of this and then you look at Venus and you think who discovered Venus and how did they know it wasn't a star and when did we what what is what's the

nature of Venus and what does Venus mean in the mythology of the Sue Indians and how far is the nearest star and how did we learn this and will we ever go to stars and I mean there's just I think you get my point that if you if you put yourself into the right arena your sense of the wonder of life grows and it automatically is coupled with curiosity okay for the people that don't have the ability to go to North Dakota they can't anyone listening can move to North Dakota if you can learn Greek you can move to North Dakota which would be much more intelligent of course Clay there's not a lot of jobs in North Dakota but besides if I that's not what I was trying to get at what I was trying to say is we have a lot of people that live in a city how besides turning off their TV once they've turned off their TV how do you acquire that sense of wonder when you're sitting in your living room how do you do it Clay what's the process for doing it well that's harder I mean you can take a walk I would say walk a mile a day because that will open your sense of wonder now of course

you have to live in a place where it's safe to walk a mile a day but you could drive to the mall and walk if you wanted to be walking in itself I think re integrates you with your body and that automatically starts your brain moving again and it it certainly contributes to mental health that's one way another way would be to do yoga or Pilates or meditate or breathing exercises that in Thuro said you have to slow down in order to see and I think that's what we don't know how to do anymore and so if you just sat in your chair and turn out all the lights and lit a candle and breathe for half an hour or held the hand of the person you care about most your child or your mate or your friend that that that in itself would would begin to do all this what you have to do is break the cycle and that can be done through any of these exercises or to read a book pick up a book let's say you read Tolstoy's War and Peace you know clear your mind enough to really get into that book and suddenly you're in Russia in the Age of Napoleon I mean you really do transport yourself read Colourages

Kubla Khan and suddenly you're in this bizarre Colourigen universe of what he projected to be the Asian world of his time books are are one of the most immediate and automatic things and what happens to me is if I am in a really really bad mode or melancholy or upset all of which happened to me from time to time if I can get over the initial hump and start reading within half an hour I'm in the world of Shakespeare or I'm in the world of Homer or I'm in the world of John Don or I'm in the world of Willi-Cather and it's a transformation it's like a magic portal so there's that or you could get busy with your hands doing craft work without other distractions without competing distractions gives you all that meditative time because while you're putting the beads on the beating needle or while you're weaving or while you're crocheting your brain gets to clear out all of the stuff that's in its

temporary files that's interesting I read one time that the brain has to have downtime it has to have basically what we would say a nap that you can't continue to go go go go go go sure that's true I mean from Jefferson's point of you I think he would say the whole culture is napping but I take your point that our brains are working they're just working on dumb stuff when you say dumb stuff what is it that you are referring to well I'm referring to the family sitting around the living room deciding whether Miss Utah or Miss Wyoming is going to win the reality show contest people are talking and they're speculating and they're reading that culture they're saying no I think that she she looks to me like she doesn't work out enough or she looks to me like she's afraid of worms or whatever and they're having this lively discussion you're thinking well if they can have a lively intelligent discussion about Miss Utah why can't they have a lively intelligent discussion about Servantes Don Quixote and what would be the difference well I have nothing

against Miss Utah I'm sure she's a she's a splendid human being but this would be kind of a challenge to our listeners if you read Don Quixote in English there's a splendid new translation by the way and you give yourself to this book everyone who reads this will write to the Thomas Jefferson hour and say my life is better for having read Servantes Don Quixote this is one of the most extraordinary life-affirming pieces of art in the history of the world and when I read it I regained a sense of some real delight in the human condition and I found myself smiling and even laughing out loud while reading Servantes and it deepened my life I promise you so that that's my challenge read even an abridged version of Servantes Don Quixote and write to the Jefferson hour TH hyphen Jefferson dot org I promise you that you will say I get it I mean I still love to watch the Bill Cosby show or Frazier or reality television but there's something about this that's just automatically more rewarding deeper

more soul affirming more more enlightening than what you can get from any television program anywhere thank you Clay Clay we're going to have to sign off in a few minutes and we have a letter a Jefferson letter that you need to go over that's our new program element that we always feature a Jefferson letter this one was a little stirring he wrote this from Exxon Province one of my favorite places by the way I'm leading cultural tours to Greece and France but France this coming October so if you're interested contact the Thomas Jefferson hour we like to take people from all over the country to Jefferson's world and this year it's Jefferson's France in October 2004 but this is a letter that he wrote from Exxon Province in southern France to his daughter Martha and he's a pretty stern dad I guess I've been a kind of stirring Jefferson on this program too but here's what he says it's a great letter for other reasons but he says I do not like you're saying that you are unable to read the ancient print of your livy livy is a Roman Latin historian I do not like you're saying that you are unable to read the print of your livy but with the aid of

your master we are always equal to what we undertake with resolution a little degree of this will enable you to decipher your livy if you always lean on your master you will never be able to proceed without him it is a part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance in Europe there are shops for every want its inhabitants therefore have no idea that their wants can be furnished otherwise remote from all other aid we are obliged to invent and to execute to find means within ourselves and not to lean on others consider therefore the conquering of your livy as an exercise in the habit of surmounting difficulties a habit which will be necessary to you in the country where you are to live and without which you will be thought a very helpless animal and less esteemed so there's Jefferson mastery brow beating his poor daughter Martha and saying if you can't master livy you can't master life I actually think that he's even though he's a little on the stern side that he's right thank you

Clay we are out of time take care everyone th hyphen jefferson dot org splendid new translations of survantes don Quixote thank you see you next week bye the squaw valley congregational church in Lake Tahoe a short drive from Reno Nevada is sponsoring a dialogue between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on the topics of war in peace this will occur on July 17th 2004 please call one five three zero five eight one four zero one one again the number is one five three zero five eight one four zero one one and ask for Jane Carlson for ticket information the North Dakota Humanities Council is still accepting contributions to the Evalbor scholarship fund if you are interested in contributing please write to Ken glass GLSS North Dakota Humanities Council box twenty one ninety one Bismarck North Dakota five eight five oh two and put it to attention of Albert scholarship fund again the information is Ken

glass North Dakota Humanities Council box twenty one ninety one Bismarck North Dakota fifty eight five oh two attention of Albert's scholarship fund Humanities Scholar Clay Jenkins and recently completed a chap book which is a pocket sized booklet on Lewis and Clark in Iowa the Thomas Jefferson hour is offering an autograph copy of this booklet as a fundraiser for donation of fifteen dollars we will send you Clay's latest chap book Lewis and Clark in Iowa this offer ends August thirty first two thousand four please call one eight hundred two seven four twelve forty one eight hundred two seven four twelve forty and ask for Ian or Janie or go to our website www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org for further donation instructions to ask mr. Jefferson a question or to donate nine dollars and receive a copy of today's program please call one eight eight four five eight eighteen oh three again the number is one eight eight eight four five eight

eighteen oh three thank you for listening and we hope you join us again next week for another entertaining historically accurate and thought provoking commentary through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson